Portable electronic devices, such as gaming devices, mobile communication devices, portable media players, portable digital assistants (PDAs), electronic book (eBook) reader devices, and the like, are becoming increasingly popular. These devices often include a screen for visually conveying information to a user. Users of such portable electronic devices can provide input via a user interface, using a pointer to select, for example, an object or link on the screen. Affirmation that the user input has been received and applied to the selected object or link is typically manifest visually on the screen by such techniques as highlighting or changing the color of the object of the link or by altering the visual representation of the pointer. In devices that employ display with a relatively short refresh time (e.g., a cathode ray tube (CRT) display, a liquid crystal display (LCD), etc.), the visual confirmation is provided almost immediately after the user provides the input.
However, some devices employ displays that do not have comparatively fast refresh times. Such displays, like an electronic paper display employed in eBook reader devices, often do not provide the same immediacy of input feedback. Instead, there may be a perceptible delay between when a user provides input and when that input is visually displayed on the screen. This delay can be confusing to users, because they are not sure whether the device registered their input at all. Complicating matters is that some of these same displays employ larger pixel granularity. As a result, it may be more difficult to identify the location of the user's intended input on the screen. In some extreme cases, the user may unintentionally activate a different object or link. This can be frustrating to users, because they are not sure why the device registered their input in that way, and it may take multiple additional inputs to unwind the incorrect selection.